You are here

Healthy Eating Strategies to Conquer the Holiday Feast

Posted on Thu, Dec 13, 2007 - 12:00am

Vancouver, December 13, 2007 — The holiday season is fast approaching and it’s everywhere around us: tempting high-fat, high-calorie dishes, the extra goodies at the office, the eggnog lattes, the festive get-togethers that always revolve around food. Most people think of the holiday season as an opportunity to indulge and they worry about the aftermath in January. Are you nutritionally prepared?
Melodie Yong, a Dietitian in the Healthy Heart Program which is part of the Providence Heart + Lung Institute at St. Paul’s Hospital, dispenses healthy and accessible nutrition tips from a clinical nutrition perspective. This holiday season, Melodie offers healthy eating strategies to conquer the big holiday feast, ensuring that the turkey is the only one stuffed to the brim this year.

Melodie wants to encourage people to focus on the time spent with family and friends over the Holidays, not just on how great the food is. Her array of useful tips include strategies on how to pre-plan food choices at parties, lower drink calories, creative ways to say “no thanks” and special gift ideas for family and friends that will help them focus on a healthier lifestyle. This year, give a gift of better health!

As I stopped to admire a cat that was sharing a lunch with his owner, we started chatting about our pets. The conversation was short, but I will never forget her looking at me seriously and saying 'thank you.' She said, 'so often people just ignore us, but the people at Providence make this extra effort to talk to us and recognize we are still human beings.”